in the habits of my captives, who spend the
morning very quietly, the first five browsing on their oak-leaves and
the sixth on her centaury-blooms. When the sun grows hot, they fly
from the bunch of leaves in the centre to the wire trellis and back
from the trellis to the leaves, or wander about the top of the cage in
a state of great excitement.

Every moment couples are formed. They pester each other, pair without
preliminaries, part without regrets and begin elsewhere all over
again. Life is sweet; and there are enough for all to choose from.
Several are persistent. Mounted on the back of the patient female, who
lowers her head and seems untouched by the passionate storm, they
shake her violently. Thus do the amorous insects declare their flame
and win the consent of the hesitating fair.

The attitude of the couple now tells us the use of a certain organic
detail peculiar to the Clythra. In several species, though not in all,
the males' fore-legs are of inordinate length. What is the object of
these extravagant arms, these curious grappling-irons out of all
proportion to the insect's size? The Grasshoppers and Locusts prolong
their hind-legs into levers to assist them in leaping. There is
nothing of the sort here: it is the fore-legs which are exaggerated;
and their excessive length has nothing to do with locomotion. The
insect, whether resting or walking, seems even to be embarrassed by
these outrageous stilts, which it bends awkwardly and tucks away as
best it can, not knowing exactly what to do with them.

But wait for the pairing; and the extravagant becomes reasonable. The
couple take up their pose in the form of a T. The male, standing
perpendicularly, or nearly, represents the cross-piece and the female
the shaft of the letter, lying on its side. To steady his attitude,
which is so contrary to the usual position in pairing, the male flings
out his long grappling-hooks, two sheet-anchors which grip the
female's shoulders, the fore-edge of her corselet, or even her head.

At this moment, the only moment that counts in the adult insect's
life, it is a good thing indeed to possess long arms, long hands, like
_Clythra longimana_ and _C. longipes_, as the scientific nomenclature
calls them. Although their names are silent on the subject, the
Taxicorn Clythra and the Six-spotted Clythra (_C. sexmaculata_, FAB.)
and many others also have recourse to the same means of equilibrium:
their fore-legs are utterly exaggerated.

Is the difficulty of pairing in a transversal position the explanation
of the long grappling-irons thrown out to a distance? We will not be
too certain, for here is the Four-spotted Clythra, who would flatly
contradict us. The male has fore-legs of modest dimensions, in
conformity with the usual rules; he places himself crosswise like the
others and nevertheless achieves his ends without hindrance. He finds
it enough to modify slightly the gymnastics of his embrace. The same
may be said of the different Cryptocephali, who all have stumpy limbs.
Wherever we look, we find special resources, known to some and unknown
to others.

CHAPTER XIX
THE CLYTHRĘ: THE EGG

Let us leave the long-armed and short-armed to pursue their amorous
contests as they please and come to the egg, the main object of my
insect-rearing. The Taxicorn Clythra is the first in the field; I see
her at working during the last days of May. A most singular and
disconcerting batch of eggs is hers! Is it really a group of eggs? I
hesitate until I surprise the mother using her hind-legs to finish
extracting the strange germ which issues slowly and perhaps
laboriously from her oviduct.

It is indeed the Taxicorn Clythra's batch. Assembled in bundles of one
to three dozen and each fastened by a slender transparent thread
slightly longer than itself, the eggs form a sort of inverted umbel,
which dangles sometimes from the trelliswork of the cover, sometimes
from the leaves of the twigs that provide the grub with food. The
bunch of grains quivers at the least breath.

We know the egg-cluster of the Hemerobius, the object of so many
mistakes to the untrained observer. The little Lace-winged Fly with
the gold eggs sets up on a leaf a group of long, tiny columns as fine
as a spider's thread, each bearing an egg as a capital. The whole
resembles pretty closely a tuft of some long-stemmed mildew. Remember
also the Eumenes' hanging egg,[1] which swings at the end of a thread,
thus protecting the grub when it takes its first mouthfuls of the heap
of dangerous game. The Taxicorn Clythra provides us with a third
example of eggs fitted with suspension-threads, but so far nothing has
given me an inkling of the function or the use of this string. Though
the mother's intentions escape me, I can at least describe her work in
some detail.

[Footnote 1: Cf. _The Mason-wasps_: chap. i.--_Translator's Note_.]

The eggs are smooth, coffee-coloured and shaped like a thimble. If you
hold them to the light, you see in the thickness of their skin five
circular zones, darker than the rest and producing almost the same
effect as the hoops of a barrel. The end attached to the
suspension-thread is slightly conical; the other is lopped off
abruptly and the section is hollowed into a circular mouth. A good
lens shows us inside this, a little below the rim, a fine white
membrane, as smooth as the skin of a drum.

In addition, from the edge of the orifice there rises a wide
membranous tab, whitish and delicate, which might be taken for a
raised lid. Nevertheless there is no raising of a lid after the eggs
are laid. I have seen the egg leave the oviduct; it is then what it
will be later, but lighter in colour. No matter: I cannot believe that
so complicated a machine can make its way, with all sail set, through
the maternal straits. I imagine that the lid-like appendage remains
lowered, closing the mouth, until the moment when the egg sees the
light. Then and not till then does it rise.

Guided by the rather less complex structure of the eggs of the other
Clythrę and of the Cryptocephali, I think of trying to take the
strange germ to pieces; and I succeed after a fashion. Under the
coffee-coloured sheath, which forms a little five-hooped barrel, is a
white membrane. This is what we see through the mouth and what I
compared with the skin of a drum. I recognize it as the regulation
tunic, the usual envelope of any insect's egg. The rest, the little
brown barrel, broached at one end and bearing a raised lid, must
therefore be an accessory integument, a sort of exceptional shell, of
which I do not as yet know any other example.

The Long-legged Clythra and the Four-spotted Clythra know nothing of
packing their eggs in long-stemmed bundles. In June, from the height
of the branches in which they are grazing, both of them carelessly
allow their eggs to drop to the ground, one by one, here and there, at
random and at long intervals, without giving the least thought to
their installation. They might be little grains of excrement, unworthy
of interest and ejected at hazard. The egg-factory and the
dung-factory scatter their products with the same indifference.

Nevertheless, let us bring the lens to bear upon the minute particle
so contumeliously treated. It is a miracle of elegance. In both
species of Clythrę the eggs have the form of truncated ellipsoids,
measuring about a millimetre in length.[2] The Long-legged Clythra's
are a very dark brown and remind one of a thimble, a comparison which
is the more exact inasmuch as they are dented with quadrangular pits,
arranged in spiral series which cross one another with exquisite
precision.

[Footnote 2: .039 inch.--_Translator's Note_.]

Those of the Four-spotted Clythra are pale in colour. They are covered
with convex scales, overlapping in diagonal rows, ending in a point at
the lower extremity, which is free and more or less askew. This
collection of scales has rather the appearance of a hop-cone. Surely a
very curious egg, ill-adapted to gliding gently through the narrow
passages of the ovaries. I feel sure that it does not bristle in this
fashion when it descends the delicate natal sheath; it is near the end
of the oviduct that it receives its coat of scales.

In the case of the three Cryptocephali reared in my cages, the eggs
are laid later; their season is the end of June and July. As in the
Clythrę, there is the same lack of maternal care, the same hap-hazard
dropping of the seeds from the centaury-blossoms and the ilex-twigs.
The general form of the egg is still that of a truncated ellipsoid.
The ornaments vary. In the eggs of the Golden Cryptocephalus and the
Ilex Cryptocephalus they consist of eight flattened, wavy ribs,
winding corkscrew-wise; in those of the Two-spotted Cryptocephalus
they take the form of spiral rows of pits.

What can this envelope be, so remarkable for its elegance, with its
spiral mouldings, its thimble-pits and its hop-scales? A few little
accidental facts put me on the right track. To begin with, I acquire
the certainty that the egg does not descend from the ovaries as I find
it on the ground. Its ornamentation, incompatible with a gentle
gliding movement, had already told me as much; I now have a clear
proof.

Mingled with the normal eggs of both the Golden Cryptocephalus and the
Long-legged Clythra, I find others which differ in no respect from the
usual run of insects' eggs. The eggs are perfectly smooth, with a
soft, pale-yellow shell. As the cage contains no other insects than
the Clythra under consideration or the Cryptocephalus, I cannot be
mistaken as to the origin of my finds.

Moreover, if any doubts remained, they would be dispelled by the
following evidence: in addition to the bare, yellow eggs there are
some whose base is set in a tiny brown, pitted cup, obviously the work
of either the Two-spotted